Thursday, January 30, 2014

Knock, Knock

I have often read where a light story or joke can be a good beginning to capture the reader’s attention. Knock, knock jokes are simple and sometimes funny. Through exhaustive research for this essay I found two that made me smile.

Knock, knock
Who's there?
Matthew
Matthew who?
Matthew lace has come undone!

Knock, knock
Who's there?
Scold
Scold who?
Scold outside!

Okay, the last one isn’t that funny, but it is timely, and as everybody knows timing is everything.  Closely related to timing is opportunity. In Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (deluxe edition) opportunity is defined as:  1. an appropriate or favorable time or occasion. 2. a situation or condition favorable for attainment of a goal. 3. a good position, chance, or prospect, as for advancement.

An opportunity can provide a job, an education, a bargain, a treasured life experience, a renewed friendship or a few extra minutes during a chaotic day. I suppose that buying lottery tickets and standing outside a bank waiting for someone to accidentally drop their money could technically fit Webster’s definition, but I want to believe there is more to it than gambling and taking advantage of another’s misfortune.

But as I think about it, I wonder how much of opportunity is luck, God’s blessing or the achievement of a well structured plan? One can have a stroke of good luck or strike out when things don’t work out as planned.

In keeping with my ever expanding list of the two ways to go through life, allow me to add two more: flexible or planned. With a planned approach there are fewer surprises because there is a plan and a goal. Whereas a life lived with a flexible attitude allows for spontaneity and may be open to more happenstance.

Some would argue that the one with the plan is better positioned to recognize an opportunity and act on it. But that can only happen if the opportunity is within the outline of the plan.

This argument has been going on for centuries. Publilius Syrus of the first, century B.C. said, “When we stop to think we often miss our opportunity.”  “Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult,” said Hippocrates sometime in his life (460-377) B.C. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, who lived between 1754 and 1838 said, “Women sometimes forgive a man who forces the opportunity, but never a man who misses one.” He who hesitates is lost, but you should also look before you leap. 

Of course, there is risk when taking advantage of what appears to be a favorable opportunity. People can and do lose money. An invitation to invest in bullion may sound like a golden opportunity until simple research reveals it is actually Gold’n Plump chicken bouillon. A fool and his money are soon parted.

It’s easy to get burned when you are open to chance and circumstance. What if… What if a fire truck suddenly became available because it was for sale? Clearly, I don’t need a fire truck – well not yet anyway. But I have a grandson to think about, and everybody knows little boys like fire trucks. Plus the possibilities of fun and frivolity are endless.

Police officer:    All right buddy where’s the fire?
Me:                  I don’t know – that’s what I’m trying to find out.

Life is full of serendipitous circumstances if you only keep your eyes and ears open.

Knock
Was that the door? I better check as opportunity only knocks once.






Thursday, January 23, 2014

Winter Wears

Last week before the temperature dropped to twenty-plus below, my wife, Rhonda spotted a couple dozen robins, wrapped in their winter wear, eating the berries that had fallen from the cedar trees. It was a puzzling site: robins, usually a harbinger of better days to come, were in Minnesota dining on berries that had not been there the day before. And these robin red breasts were full-figured, or at least they appeared to be. But it could have been that their otherwise fit flying form was hiding under their winter coats.

In addition to a winter coat or two, I have my own winter wardrobe: fleece-lined hooded sweatshirts, flannel-lined jeans and flannel shirts (you see the pattern?). They’re starting to look washed-out from the uniform attention I have been giving them. I’m not sure if this winter qualifies as an “old-fashioned” winter (lots of snow and bitter cold), but I think we’re close. Of course, I don’t walk almost everywhere like I used to when I was a kid, so it’s hard to gauge it from the warm side of a window.

Depending upon the school I was attending, our house on Church Street was somewhere between a few blocks and a mile (as the boy walks) from school. Sometimes I got a ride, but most of the time I walked, especially during my junior-high years when it was considered unfashionable to have your mother drive you to school.

I would walk with Tom and sometimes Andy to school.  When it was really cold we would turn our backs to the wind and go in reverse. Another boy in our neighborhood, Arty Joe, most often ran to school. No matter how cold it was, he only wore an unlined sweatshirt, the kind that zips with a hood (the one I have is reserved for spring and fall). On really cold days Arty Joe would zip up his sweatshirt and run to school, while the rest of us made our way bundled up with heavy coats, mittens, hats and scarves (sometimes borrowed from a snoozing snowman).

Once, during a blizzard when the streets in town were impassable, my brother and I were forced to walk to church with our dad. Dad set a quick pace even in the deep snow. In June it was hard enough to keep up with him, but that Sunday morning it was especially difficult as I tried to match his footsteps in the drifts.  The only other people in church that day came on snowmobiles (for the fun of it I guess).

Of course after church, there was shoveling and snow blowing to do, and it wasn’t just our driveway.  Dad took it upon himself to make sure that everybody in the neighborhood got a look at his snow blower from their living room window, as one of us went door-to-door clearing driveways.


Now I rarely take my tractor out of my yard, as most of my neighbors have skid loaders, tractors, trucks with plows or their own snow blowers. Nobody walks to town out here; I live too far from church to walk there, and I don’t own a snowmobile. About the only thing that has remained the same over the years is that I still have a scarf (lawfully purchased), gloves, hat and a heavy winter coat. But old-fashioned or not, this winter wears on me and the robins.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Robert

It has occurred to me that throughout my life I’ve taken many people for granted. They float in and out with little notice from me until one day I realize how special they were. Unfortunately, that day is usually the day I find out they’re gone.

Last week I found out a guy I knew in school had died. Even though Robert M. had graduated from high school a couple years ahead of me, I had talked with him somewhat regularly during those years. In a small school you know many people on both sides of your grade. I hadn’t talked to Robert in a long time, but allow me to tell you how I remember him.

I would love to say he was my friend – but I don’t know that I did anything to earn it. Robert would have called me his friend because he regarded everyone as his friend and treated them accordingly. Even though not everyone was always kind to him, Robert was rarely unkind. Today he would be described as a child with special needs. That certainly sounds better than some of the terms and phrases we used in school in the 70’s.

Perhaps I am working through some guilt – maybe. Robert had much love to give, and I did a poor job of returning it.  He was a large, powerful kid who gave big hugs. His smile was genuine, and he made me (and I suspect everyone else) feel good.  

Robert succeeded where most of us fail. He didn’t judge others, and I don’t know if he ever saw another’s faults, if he did he never said. Robert only saw the good in others. He didn’t criticize, and I don’t remember ever hearing him complain. As far as I know he went through the rest of his life like that. Robert may have been one of the most genuinely happy people I have ever known.

To say that Robert had special needs may be true, but imagine for a moment a friend who was always glad to see you, never unkind, generous with his hugs and his smiles and accepted you for who you are – wouldn’t that be something?

I think we are the ones in need, and it is people like Robert who not only fill those needs; they teach us how to live. Robert was a good man, and I could have done a better job treating him as my friend.

If given a choice I’m not sure I would choose to live my life over. Yet, I would jump at the chance to go back and make some changes. In addition to the million do-overs, I would like one more chance to tell Robert how much I appreciated him.

Even though I would love to get another one of Robert’s big hugs and see his beautiful smile, I never will again in this life. But what I can do is to try and learn from the example Robert gave and treat people the special way he did – with kindness, forgiveness and genuine love.


Friday, January 10, 2014

Christmas Cards

I was out plowing the driveway today, and I took the shoes off the plow so I could remove a layer of the packed snow. The shoes help keep the gravel from being plowed up because they keep the blade of the plow off the ground, but after a while the shoes must come off or the plow just scratches the surface. While I was out I checked the mailbox, but there was nothing there – no bills, no letters, no cards (no, there wouldn’t be on January 1st would there?).

Soon the Christmas cards will no longer come, and I will have to wait another year to read the news of changing careers and shedding tears, baby carriages and children’s marriages. Another year will go by without any written word from many of these folks who sent the cards. It’s about the only connection we have to the fading world of letter writing, which is really too bad considering the joy one feels when a hand-addressed envelope from friends or family is found waiting in the mailbox.

I seem to recall that my mother displayed the Christmas cards we received on the RCA television (but I suppose I could be talked out of this by my sisters). My grandmother would display her cards and letters in pockets on the branches of a large flannel Christmas tree she had made. The tree hung on a door and quickly filled-out as the season progressed. At my home, the cards and letters are left on the table until they are read and then they are saved.  However, the pictures are displayed for weeks in a collage-like arrangement which is hung in the kitchen.

I recently received a couple letters from two women who shared their thoughts with me on writing. Both of them also sent me the Christmas letters they send out to friends and family. They have not given their permission for me to include their names, nor have I asked for it. So I will only refer to them as J and M. (believe me when I say J and M are not their real names).

In her Christmas letter M wrote about how as a little girl she was so happy to find a card in her mailbox that her aunt had sent her.  Those cards she received were so special to her that she has saved them for sixty years. She writes that she “enjoys getting cards from family or friends no matter how much or how little is written in them. I still love getting mail in my mailbox just like that little girl did all those years ago.”

J has kept a daily journal for over sixty years.  She tells me that she received a diary from a neighbor lady and has written in a journal every day since. “Our lives go by so fast, but I must write down each day regardless how mundane it may be (according to some people)!”

I have much to learn, but I do feel we are witnessing the death of the hand written personal letter, and other than J. I do not know anyone who keeps a daily journal or a diary. I believe I know how to record the mundane (according to some people), but perhaps I could step it up a bit from once a week to a daily habit, privately, of course, as who wants to read that every day?  And there may be someone who would appreciate getting a letter from me.

Social media, sending text messages and emails are poor substitutes for letter writing and keeping a journal for others to read someday. Clearly, they just scratch the surface of a lasting keepsake. Slip off your shoes, get comfortable and hand write a letter or start a journal. It will stick around longer than this season’s snow.


Thursday, January 2, 2014

January 2014

“The life which is unexamined is not worth living,” Plato wrote this, recalling a speech given by Socrates at his own trial.  Both men lived around 400 B.C., and as far as I know both are dead.

Over two thousand years later, people still ponder their past and resolve to do better, especially at the beginning of a new year.  Personally, I think it would be good for all concerned if this was done more frequently, but for now let us recognize the merit in an annual refocusing of our reflective lens.  

Even though it may be easier to take stock of another and suggest ways for them to improve, it may be more profitable to take a look at yourself and see how you can improve. One popular course of action is to resolve to eat in a more healthful manner and exercise regularly. But so many have tried and failed through the years it seems fruitless – which may be part of the problem – not enough fruit in the diet.

When I was a kid it was considered funny to “give up smoking” during lent, although few kids actually smoked (although I did know one boy in 1969 who smoked at the age of eleven, but he quit sometime the following year).  I don’t smoke, although I think smoking a pipe may make me appear more literary. But beginning a bad habit for appearance sake goes against the underlying theme of New Year’s resolutions, that is to better oneself.

I guess I’m a little uncomfortable publicly declaring my promise to end a bad habit, much less start a new one, as that would involve admitting I actually have one (or one-hundred and one). So perhaps instead let me try and modify my current behavior.

For instance, I don’t often raise my voice, but I firmly believe it would be better if I never did (unless it was an emergency, such as if I were losing an argument).

Naturally, I could stand to get some more exercise. So with that in mind I will use the stairs whenever the escalator is out of order, and I promise not to complain about it.

Just like W.C. Fields, small children bother me, but this year I resolve to spend more time with them. I will start small by holding my new born grandson in the first month or so and work my way up from there.

This year I will only eat when I am hungry and not as a recreational sport; I will eat my fill and no more.  Holidays and desserts, of course, are subject to my discretion and are not to be included in any general binding statement.

Recognizing that it is not my place to judge others, I will withhold my opinions and condemnations unless such behavior is so abhorrent and contrary to all that is right and holy.

I promise to read more, watch more movies, listen to more music, and play my banjo more. I will care less about what others think when I believe what I am doing is not immoral, harmful to myself, others, animals or the environment, void where prohibited by law and does not require any assembly. And, I better get started soon because as Plato wrote, “The beginning is the most important part of the work.”